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Granquist analyzes athletic psyche

Associate Professor of Kinesiology Megan Granquist talks about the psychological factors of athletic performance Tuesday in the President’s Dining Room. Granquist shared information from her book, “Psychosocial Strategies for Athletic Training,” published in 2015 and focuses on stress management techniques and methods by which she helps patients work with stress and coping strategies. / photo by Sarah Vander Zon
Associate Professor of Kinesiology Megan Granquist talks about the psychological factors of athletic performance Tuesday in the President’s Dining Room. Granquist shared information from her book, “Psychosocial Strategies for Athletic Training,” published in 2015 and focuses on stress management techniques and methods by which she helps patients work with stress and coping strategies. / photo by Sarah Vander Zon

Megan Granquist, associate professor of kinesiology and director of the athletic training program, discussed “Psychosocial Strategies for Athletic Training” Tuesday in the President’s Dining Room.

Granquist, a co-author of the 2015 book with the same name as the lecture, said she first became interested in the subject during her undergraduate studies when she took a course in sports psychology.

Students had to apply a psychological skill to their projected profession.

Granquist decided to apply goal-setting to knee rehabilitation, she told the audience of roughly 15.

As an athletic trainer, she found it interesting that different patients with the same injury had various responses to the injury and healing protocol.

Granquist said she did not expect to become a professor.

She said her goal was simply to learn about the psychological aspects of sports injury and apply the knowledge to athletic training.

Now she is in her ninth year as a faculty member here, and she is director of the athletic training program.

In sports psychology, a person’s psychological factors affect his or her performance both physically and mentally, Granquist said.

Two people can have the same injury and one will heal faster than the other.

They may also have different emotional and behavioral reactions to treatment, she said.

“Sports psychology encompasses the holistic view of the mind and body as one,” she said.

Within her book’s 11 chapters, Granquist and her co-authors discuss the competencies that students are required to meet, such as clinical integration proficiencies – or being able to select and integrate psychosocial techniques into athletes’ treatment ­– and theoretical background.

Granquist’s research also focuses on stress-related growth, which is the potential for positive growth to be derived from a stressful experience, such as sports injury.

During rehabilitation from sports injury, some patients do more of the rehab exercises than recommend by their trainers, while others do less than they are supposed to.

Granquist said some of her research focuses on over-adherence to protocol, as that aspect is rarely touched on in athletic training literature.

—Tyler Evains

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